Different views
Consider these two items:
- • "The sight of a huge flotilla of ships carrying thousands of foreigners out of harm's way has only served to highlight the plight of those left behind. Civilians - mostly, but not exclusively, Lebanese - are the main casualties. There is now a rising chorus of experts who have raised the question of international humanitarian law."
- • "British navy warships and helicopters are in Beirut this lunchtime - to rescue more British nationals - trapped by the fighting in Lebanon. They're being loaded on to two Royal Navy vessels - which will take them to Cyprus later this afternoon."
Clearly two news organisations with vastly different views on the main story at midday (UK time) Thursday.
Actually, they're both the 91Èȱ¬. One was 91Èȱ¬ World, broadcasting to audiences outside the UK. The other was 91Èȱ¬ News 24, the domestic news channel. And at lunchtime today we had very different ideas about what we wanted to concentrate on. It's a great thing about the 91Èȱ¬ that we have sufficient editorial independence to be able to make these decisions. Both, in their own way, are very focused on the audiences served by the programmes. Neither (in my view) is more correct than the other.
At 91Èȱ¬ World we have devoted a lot of time to the international operation taking people out of Lebanon. And it's true that we have looked at it more through British eyes - partly because for safety reasons we're sharing a lot of resources with domestic 91Èȱ¬ outlets in Beirut.
But we've also reported on what nations like India, Sri Lanka and Canada have been doing. And we keep coming back to issues facing the people who can't leave the country. One of our longest-serving Middle East correspondents, Jim Muir, is in Tyre in southern Lebanon, which has been very badly hit by the bombardment. Gavin Hewitt has reported on Lebanese people trying to escape to Syria. And of course this is a story with two sides - so our correspondents in northern Israel have been reporting on the consequences of the missile attacks there. News 24 has covered the same issues - and at times we've been "simulcasting" - ie both channels carrying the same coverage, presented from both Beirut and Haifa.
The challenge for us - whether we be serving domestic or international audiences - is not to lose sight of all the issues. It's complicated; it's changing rapidly; opinions are strongly-held on all sides and need to be properly reflected. So even if we spend a few hours of one day focusing on one aspect - such as the British evacuees - we must make sure that over time we keep coming back to the core questions. What's happening now? What caused this? What's going to resolve it? And many others...
Richard Porter is editor of
Comments
Two organisations with vastly different views, both the 91Èȱ¬? It sounds like a clear cut case of organizational schizophrenia.
What is happening and what caused this war? It's a clear example of what happens when a third world country becomes part of a determined messianic mission to destroy a well armed first world country and attacks it. It's own continued existance is put in grave doubt and all treaties intended to prevent humanitarian disasters on a vast scale ultimately go out the window as the first world nation defending itself will be undeterred by pleas of those who suddenly awoke and came to the table. This is easy enough to understand even by two entirely separate minds both housed in the same news organ.
Why are all the hacks in the Middle East? There's a worse humanitarian crisis in Somalia. "Dead black people don't count" evidently.
Is the assumption then that the domestic audience is so insular and narrow minded that they don't have any judgement about the relative importance of events as they apply to anyone other than members of their own tribe?
Patronising in the extreme.
"Why are all the hacks in the Middle East? There's a worse humanitarian crisis in Somalia. "Dead black people don't count" evidently."
The 91Èȱ¬ cannot have anything that might be negative towards their favourite victim group: Muslims/Islam.
91Èȱ¬ World of course is the more mature of the two.
Mercifully it's free of the weak, cheap, in-jokes which are slowing making News24 a clone of SunTV. Sorry, Sky News.
Shame we can't get it here in the UK. Or maybe the shame is that the News24 team just ignore any adverse comment about a presenting style which is making the channel unwatchable.
Is it just me or does anyone else think that the Editor's Blog is basically a place for the 91Èȱ¬'s top brass to pat themselves on the back in public? Because this post is just another example of that from what I've seen...
There are Punjabi speaking people living all over the world including U.K. But the 91Èȱ¬ WORLD does not broadcast NEWS in the Punjabi language although news are being broadcast in other languages representing lesser numbers.
For your information, there are a number of private websites, radio and T.V. stations and print media around the globe providing this service. I would like to see this service provided by the 91Èȱ¬ as well.
I would appreciate your response.
Yours truly,
S. Dhanda
A very interesting posting, Richard. Comparing your own network's report with the UK domestic one, from the same sources, does make your's look of very much higher quality. As John Charman has already implied, I too would very much wish to receiving your version, within the UK. Obviously criticism of the domestic version should be aimed at your domestic colleagues, who aren't posting about this, unfortunately. Perhaps for reasons connected with the way their version is so terribly limited and anglo-centric. But if it might help you get wider use of your content, I want you to know that I feel it is really dangerous, and wrong, that domestic editors assume we are so much less concerned for non-British angles, and people, that we are all so "dumbed down". Especially when Britain is directly facilitating the harm and those individuals who are responsible for assisting Israel by blocking UN intervention are presently disappearing off on vacation in anticipation that the electorate will soon forget about the suffering whilst they are away, even as it continues. That domestic editors - not only the 91Èȱ¬'s, but ITN's too - assist in that might seem very suspect. Please keep up your coverage, and follow the vitally important angle of humanitarian law, right through the conflict and, hopefully, through Lebanon's recovery too.
"The sight of a huge flotilla of ships carrying thousands of foreigners out of harm's way has only served to highlight the plight of those left behind." - broadcast, we then learn, only outside the UK. Doesn't that audience already know and understand this question? The question needs to be raised precisely for the home audience. The "tailoring" of stories to appeal to particular audiences has a discouraging aspect to it.
I think the 91Èȱ¬ are right. What is news in England is not news in the rest of the world. Just like the US does not realise the rest of the world exists. There has been no news coverage on TV or radio about the latest tsunami at all. And the coverage of Beruit has been shoking with only CNN slightly more noteworthy. I read the 91Èȱ¬ news homepage every day and it helps to get some perspective in this crazy world, even if i am reading the US version.
Keep it up
The 91Èȱ¬ is the only thing England has got going for it at the moment, oh and maybe Boots Chemist.
Regards
Sinead Chilton
Ventura
California
(raisied in Bradford, West Yorkshire)
Perhaps Mr Porter would have a more full understanding of things if he and his associates could bring themselves to report, that is, to communicate the events as they have seen or heard them, and really really try to keep opinions and commentaries for those pieces which are identified as opinions.
Out of interest, why are the people covering the story in Lebanon specifically named and the people in Isreal are merely "correspondents"?
" * 2.
* At 01:38 PM on 21 Jul 2006,
* Arty Smokes wrote:
Why are all the hacks in the Middle East? There's a worse humanitarian crisis in Somalia. "Dead black people don't count" evidently."
I'd imagine that a re-run of the same "Black people slaughtering each other whilst their nations starve" story which has cropped up for the last 25 years would be a bit tedious. Don't blame the West for the pitiful failings of African governments.
Interesting to see how the message is different for different areas of the 91Èȱ¬ - not that there's anything wrong with that. This idea of being 'on message' applies only to repressive political parties and corporate monoliths - multiple perspectives from the same news organisation is no bad thing.
I somewhat disagree with John Charman. A broadcaster job is to talk to its audience... without losing his/her soul. Which brings me to my own problem with 91Èȱ¬ World (or rather, the little I see of it)...
Since I live in an area of Canada where 91Èȱ¬ World is not yet available on digital cable (it should be available in a few months), I watch the 2200 UTC broadcast, which is carried live on CBC Newsworld and many PBS stations in North America.
91Èȱ¬ World is at its best when it reports the top world news. The reporting is usually first class. But I dislike the Washington/London dual-anchor format and the heavy slant on the trivial US news of the day. I also hate the over-reliance on "newsmaker" interviews and "duplexes" coming almost exclusively from a pro or anti US administration perspective, from "inside the beltway" as they say, south of the border. If I wanted their opinions, I'd watch the US networks, thank you very much!
I'm eager to watch more of your programming from an non-US centric perspective.
By 91Èȱ¬'s own reports, in the two weeks since fighting began, about 400 Lebanese have died. In the same period, over 16,000 people were killed in the conflict in the Congo, half of them Children. Over 40 times as many. However, the conflict in Lebanon has gotten more than 40 times as much coverage on 91Èȱ¬ as the Congo. Reporting in Lebanon often graphically depicted the victims' suffering while the Congo got barely a mere mention. And Congo is just one of many far worse conflicts around the world than Lebanon. If that doesn't demonstrate 91Èȱ¬'s anti Israeli bias, I don't know what would.
To poster #14, the bulletin you refer to is (I believe) the only 91Èȱ¬ World bulletin that is co-presented from London and Washington. This is because this particular bulletin is (as you say) carried on PBS in America and 91Èȱ¬ America. Most (if not all) other 91Èȱ¬ World bulletins are presented from London.
To poster #5. No we can't receive 91Èȱ¬ World in the UK because it is a commercially funded channel. We can't even watch it on the Internet! I really would like to be able to watch 91Èȱ¬ World in the UK.
I have been checking the 91Èȱ¬ website and found it very unbalanced on the subject of Lebanese-Israeli conflict.
Despite the fact that the Lebanese people have had their country flattened by the fourth most powrful army in the world the 91Èȱ¬ decides to only show the view points of Israelis.
I have counted and so far the 'view points' featured on the website are as follows
6 for the Israelis
1 for the Lebanese
0 for the Palestinians.
I can appreciate the 91Èȱ¬ has lost faith in the concept of good journalism and sold itself to the Israeli lobby but do us the courtesy of not treating us like fools.
Thank God for the internet's freedom of information otherwise the 91Èȱ¬ would force us to listen to their Israeli mantra.
No doubt this comment will get lost somewhere.